Steve Jobs was planning to create a real-life Willy Wonka tour of the Apple facilities
The new biography Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success contains a lot of interesting new facts about computer pioneer Steve Jobs. Sure, you may already know that the FBI had a massive file on the Apple CEO detailing his sub-par college grades and past use of LSD. But we're willing to guess you didn't know this (though perhaps by virtue of the LSD use, you could have inferred it): Steve Jobs was planning on giving away a Willy Wonka-style tour of the Apple facilities to whomever found a golden ticket inside the 1,000,000th iMac sold. Read more...
Feds: Apple, Google, Adobe, Intel, Pixar had wage-fixing no-poach pact
Emails between Apple, Adobe, Intel and others are making them look bad as the US Justice Department mounts a case against them for setting up "anti-poaching" deals in which they allegedly agreed not to hire each other's people away.
The emails are part of the Justice Department's evidence in its class action suit that accuses the tech firms of agreeing not to steal each other's staff so that they could artificially lower employees' wages by killing competition.
The defendants, who also include Google, Pixar and Lucasfilm, are trying to get the case dismissed on the grounds that there was no conspiracy between them all, the agreements were all just separate deals that made no reference to each other.
A redacted document filed with the court before the scheduled case management conference on January 26 details evidence of emails and phone calls between the defendants organising the anti-poaching and anti-bidding-war deals.
The DOJ claims that in May of 2005, Adobe CEO Bruce Chizen emailed Steve Jobs forwarding an internal email from Adobe's senior VP of human resources about the recruitment of Apple employees. Read more...
What’s up for Apple in 2012?
2011 was a big year for Apple. The company continued to dominate the tablet market, with no rival coming close the iPad in sales. It also released Lion, an update to OS X that delivered hundreds of new features; pushed out a major update to iOS that finally cut the cord for backups and syncing; launched its new cloud service, iCloud (albeit not without some issues); and continued to rack up record sales of Macs.
And, of course, 2011 was the year that Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO because of declining health just weeks before his death on Oct. 5.
On several fronts, Apple seems likely to capitalize on its successes in the coming year. Fueling continued growth in 2012 will be several trends that began this year within the company, the consumer market and enterprise IT. Read more...
This Dianamania is a slur on Jobs
Steve Jobs was a remarkable and fascinating businessman, and by some distance the most interesting and accomplished personality operating in an important corner of the economy. He had a respect for the intelligence of human beings and their ambition, and potential – showing an optimism which is rare in a cynical industry. And Jobs left us far too early.
But we knew what was coming, didn’t we? In the media, a race to the top of Mount Hyperbole, that was easily won by Stephen Fry, with President Obama close behind. And public, showy and stagey displays of public emotion. (Why? Did no one tell you he was ill?).
I actually find all this disrespectful, and as distasteful as any sick joke.
Nobody could be more scathing about mindless technology worship than Steve Jobs. My favourite interview with him was by Gary Wolf, when Jobs was 39, and had realised the utopianism of his generation was shallow, empty and a giant diversion. The web would augment the world, not change it. Far more important, he stressed, was education. Read more...
Steve Jobs: World leaders and CEOs pay tribute
World leaders and CEOs have paid tribute to Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who has died at the age of 56.
Jobs is credited with transforming Apple, the company he co-founded with Steve Wozniak in 1976, into one of the biggest consumer brands in the world. Outside of Apple, Jobs was a driving force in helping Pixar, the animation house he owned from 1986 to 2006, become the Oscar-winning studio it is today.
Tributes have been pouring in, praising Jobs' singular vision for helping to revolutionise the world of computing and for opening the world's eyes to the transformative power of technology. Read more...
Birth father of Steve Jobs has no comment
Steve Jobs never met his biological father, and even as the Apple co-founder's cancer progressed, he expressed no desire to talk with the man who gave him up for adoption as a baby.
When Jobs stepped down as Apple CEO in August because of his failing health, John Jandali, now 80, said he hoped his son would contact him.
In a rare interview, he told the British newspaper The Sun at that time: "I live in hope that before it is too late he will reach out to me. Even to have just one coffee with him just once would make me a very happy man." The side-by-side photos of father and son, run by the newspaper, are eerie in their similarities, and show what Jobs might have looked like had he lived to his birth father's age. Read more...
Obama+world pays tribute to Steve Jobs
US President Barack Obama has joined the outpouring of tributes to former Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who died last night.
"Michelle and I are saddened to learn of the passing of Steve Jobs," the statement from the White House read.
The statement went on to praise the Apple co-founder and billionaire effusively, saying he "exemplified the spirit of American ingenuity" by building a hugely successful company from his garage.
"Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it," the statement gushed.
"The world has lost a visionary." Read more...
The incredible legacy of Steve Jobs: From the mouse to the iPad
The original Macintosh mouse
Steve Jobs died Wednesday at the age of 56. The former Apple CEO was a visionary in the world of computing and is largely responsible for the level at which computers are integrated with our everyday lives. There's a very good chance that you're reading this story on a computer, tablet, or smartphone that Jobs either invented or inspired, and that's something that is unique to his legacy.
Jobs — along with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne — founded Apple in 1976. The first computers were simplistic but revolutionary for their time. Then in 1984, the company introduced the Macintosh 128K, the first computer that abandoned text-only commands in favor of a graphical user interface. Along with it came the mouse, a device which is so crucial to modern computing that it hasn't changed in nearly three decades. Read more...
10 Unusual Things You Didn’t Know About Steve Jobs
1) Nature versus Nurture. His sister is Mona Simpson but he didn't know it until he was an adult. Mona Simpson was one of my favorite novelists from the late 80s. Her first novel, Anywhere but Here, was about her relationship with her parents. Which, ironically, were Steve Jobs' parents. But since Steve Jobs was adopted (see below), they didn't know they were brother-sister until the 90s when he tracked her down. It's proof (to an extent) of the nature versus nurture argument. Two kids, without knowing they were brother and sister, both having a unique sensibility of life on this planet to become among the best artists in the world in completely different endeavors. And, to me it was great that I was a fan of both without realizing (even before they realized) that they were related. Read more...
Potential pitfalls in Apple CEO transition, say experts
Apple's new CEO faces a challenge putting his own imprint on the company as long as Steve Jobs sticks around, a management expert said today.
Jobs, who resigned from the CEO spot yesterday, was immediately given the title Chairman of the company's board.
On Thursday, Apple named Tim Cook, formerly the chief operating officer, as the new CEO.
"It's going to be extremely difficult for the new CEO to go his own way and succeed in a context like this," said Peter Cappelli, a professor at the Wharton School and the director of its Center for Human Resources. "It's going to be difficult [for Cook] to do anything different with Jobs as chairman." Read more...
Ignore the doomsayers; Apple will be just fine after Jobs
They've already started: Apple will be fine for two years, then drift into failure. Apple and Steve Jobs are one and the same, and now that he's resigned the company is leaderless.
Don't believe it. Yes, Jobs has had an incredible effect on Apple since returning as CEO more than a decade ago, reversing its late-1999s death spiral. But over the last dozen years, he has pulled together a crack, tightly knit team to keep the Apple innovation going for some time. Could Apple at some point drift into complacency or lose its edge? Sure -- look at Palm, Research in Motion, Nokia, Sun, and Hewlett-Packard. But you can also look at IBM and Oracle, the former a company that had strong leaders yet has didn't become a cult of personality dependent on that strongman. Read more...
Steve Jobs’ resignation ‘end of an era’
Steve Jobs' resignation Wednesday as the CEO of Apple will not disrupt the company's product plans in the short-term, but could dull its ability to dazzle consumers down the road, according to one analyst.
"Apple is fine, and will be," said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research. "Apple knows what it's doing for the next big thing, maybe the next two next big things. They lose the showmanship of Jobs, but [the company's executives] have their marching orders."
Shortly after Jobs submitted his resignation, the Apple board of directors took his advice and named Tim Cook, formerly the chief operating officer, as the new CEO. Also on Wednesday, Jobs was named chairman of the board. Read more...
The end of both the desktop OS and mobile OS is upon us
Investment banking firm Jefferies stated the obvious this week when it issued a report predicting that iOS and Mac OS X will be one operating system by 2016. Nearly a year ago, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said that was his goal in what I playfully dubbed his MiOS strategy. Jobs had just previewed Mac OS X Lion, touting the user interface capabilities it was borrowing from iOS. The forthcoming iOS 5 also takes some UI concepts first released in Lion, but as I'm under NDA with Apple, I can't tell you which ones.
iOS is based on a subset of Mac OS X, so in a very real sense, they always have been the same operating system. As horsepower has improved in mobile devices, Apple has enlarged iOS to take on more of what the desktop Mac OS X could handle, such as more multitasking and more complex graphics and video processing. At the same time, Apple has been steadily pushing gesture-based peripherals -- not just its laptops' gesture-capable touchpads, but also its Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad that bring gesture savvy to any Mac -- in a gentle but persistent reeducation of its Mac users. Read more...
Apple’s iTunes in the Cloud isn’t really a cloud music service
Monday at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference keynote address in San Francisco, CEO Steve Jobs rolled out a new batch of software as part of the company’s newly announced iCloud service. One big portion is called “iTunes in the Cloud,” and it’s that big cloud music service we’ve been hearing rumblings about for months.
Except what Apple (AAPL) is offering in iTunes 10.3, the latest version of the software, isn’t a cloud music service – at least not in the common sense. It’s not the same kind of service being offered by Google and Amazon, among other players such as mSpot. Those services actually stream music over an Internet connection to various devices; Apple doesn’t (at least, for the most part). Instead, it makes it possible for purchased songs to be quickly downloaded on any iOS device or computer. Read more...
iCloud, Operating System Updates Unveiled at WWDC
At its first Worldwide Developers Conference in five years without a new iPhone, Apple instead launched a dazzling display of features for its mobile devices and computers with iCloud and updated operating systems.
iCloud, announced by CEO Steve Jobs in a temporary return from medical leave, will take the place of MobileMe services to synchronize contacts, calendar events, and e-mail on different devices as well as share them with friends and family. Ad-free push mail accounts will be hosted at me.com. Read more...